TRIBE HYPOCALINI
View Image Gallery of Tribe Hypocalini.

Hypocala Guenée

Type species: deflorata Fabricius, India.

Species of Hypocala generally are robust with relatively narrow, cryptically patterned forewings, and flash coloration in yellow and black on the hindwings. The strongest marking on the forewing is the generally biarcuate submarginal that cuts off the marginal zone that can differ in colour from the rest of the wing, particularly in andamana Wileman and relatives. The hindwings have a distinctive pattern in most species, best appreciated from the figures on Plate 11, though the andamana group has a more simple broad black border. The underside of fore- and hindwings is marked with yellow and black, the black being a submarginal band and a discal bar or spot in each case. There is more fawn and buff distal to the submarginal. The abdomen is yellow, variably banded with black, but usually with a broad black band just subapically. The male antennae are filiform with short cilia, and the legs of that sex lack conspicuous scale-tufts. The labial palps have a short, somewhat downturned third segment that gives the moth a slightly snouted appearance.

The male abdomen has the eighth segment much less heavily sclerotised than those anterior to it, thickened in bands in places, though not in the ‘framed corematous’ manner. The seventh segment is modified in some species, e.g. a long spine from one corner of the tergite in
subsatura Guenée, and with a circular notch in the posterior margin of the sternite in violacea Butler. The apodemes of the basal sternite are short, outwardly directed, with prominent flanges along the venulae somewhat as in the Euteliinae (Holloway, 1985). The genitalia are also unusual in structure. The uncus has highly complex ‘ears’ in most species. The valves are deep, somewhat rectangular, with a variety of small lobes, spines and flanges. The juxta forms a ring round the anellus and is not of the inverted ‘V’ type unless that part has been shortened to a vestige. The saccus is moderately developed to (in subsatura) very long. The aedeagus and vesica are very variable, but the latter can have groups of spines and (andamana) at least one large diverticulum.

The female of the type species has the ostium between the eighth and the unmodified seventh segments. The ductus has a short sclerotised section and a long membranous one that opens into a slightly pyriform and corrugated corpus bursae that has an extensive elongate-ovate spined band distally and a much smaller one opposite and set more basally. Just at the base of the bursa is a small, pyriform appendix bursae.

The genus is widespread in the Old World tropics, extending to the Pacific, including Hawaii. There is one Neotropical species (Poole, 1989).

The larva is cylindrical over the abdominal segments but tapers towards the head over the thorax. All prolegs are fully developed. Host records (Miyata, 1983; Robinson
et al., 2001) are predominantly, but not exclusively, from Diospyros (Ebenaceae). The larvae often construct slight shelters of webbing in the leaves, particularly in early stages, and pupate in a cell in the soil. The pupa lacks a bloom.

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